Google must surely be getting a workout after Anne Hathaway revealed she lost 25 pounds for her role in Les Miserables by eating only oatmeal paste. Keep clicking to see Photos: Anne Hathaway’s oatmeal paste crash diet and 10 others who lost weight for movie roles.'
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Anne Hathaway: Les Miserables (opens Dec. 25)

Anne Hathaway lost 25 pounds to play the consumptive Fantine in Les Miserables. “I had to be obsessive about it – the idea was to look near death,” Hathaway, 30, told Vogue in its December issue. Click on the next photo to see how she did it.'
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Anne Hathaway: Les Miserables (opens Dec. 25)

Hathaway first lost 10 pounds prior to beginning filming, then another 15 pounds during the shoot by eating only two thin pieces of oatmeal paste – and nothing else – every day. Incidentally, no one seems to know what oatmeal paste is, and the writer of the Vogue article didn’t ask. Type the words into Google, and you’ll get recipes for oatmeal paste remedies for diaper rash, sunburn and facials – but not for oatmeal paste snacks.'
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Natalie Portman: Black Swan

Natalie Portman lost 20 pounds for her role as a ballerina in Black Swan, for which she won an Oscar. Click on the next photo to see how she did it.'
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Natalie Portman: Black Swan

For Portman, it was the workouts that impacted her more than any changes to her diet. “I had never gotten that much training; to be doing five-to-eight hours a day of it was really a challenge,” she recalls.'
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Matthew McConaughey: The Dallas Buyers Club (to be released in 2013)

Matthew McConaughey has lost at least 30 pounds on a liquids-only diet in preparation for shooting The Dallas Buyers Club, in which he plays an HIV-positive patient.'
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Matthew McConaughey: The Dallas Buyers Club (to be released in 2013)

“It takes a while for your body to understand that it has to feed off of itself and that you’re not going to give it something else from the outside,” McConaughey told Larry King.'
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Beyonce: Dreamgirls

The curvaceous Beyonce needed to lose weight fast for her role in the movie Dreamgirls.'
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Beyonce: Dreamgirls

Beyonce turned to the Master Cleanse fast to lose 20 pounds in less than two weeks. The detox plan calls for followers to live on a diet of hot water, lemon juice, maple syrup and cayenne pepper for 10 days.'
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Robert De Niro: Raging Bull

Robert De Niro’s preparation for Raging Bull was twofold. First, he first got himself into shape to play young Jake LaMotta, a 160-pound prizefighter.'
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Robert De Niro: Raging Bull

Then, De Niro had to gain weight to play a washed-up, 225-pound LaMotta. He achieved this feat by eating his way through Europe for four months.'
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Daniel Day-Lewis: In the Name of the Father

Daniel Day-Lewis lost 30 pounds to play an IRA prisoner who went on a hunger strike, in In the Name of the Father.'
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Daniel Day-Lewis: In the Name of the Father

To prepare for the part, Lewis also lived in solitary confinement at a freezing cold abandoned prison, subsisting on meagre prison rations.'
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Jennifer Hudson: Winnie

Jennifer Hudson’s 80-pound weight loss in 2011 allowed her to take on the title role in Winnie.'
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Jennifer Hudson: Winnie

“Whatever it takes to morph into a character I’ll do it,” said Hudson, who lost the weight by training and by following the Weight Watchers plan.'
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Christian Bale: The Machinist

For his role in The Machinist, Christian Bale ate nothing but coffee, water, a can of tuna and an apple a day while exercising rigorously for three months. He lost 63 pounds, weighing just 110 pounds when he was done.'
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Christian Bale: Batman

For his very next role, Bale had to double his body weight, bulking up to 220 pounds to play the muscular Bruce Wayne in Batman.'
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Matt Damon: Courage Under Fire

Matt Damon lost 50 pounds to play a heroin addict. The role required just two days of filming.'
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Matt Damon: Courage Under Fire

“I’d run six-and-a-half miles in the morning and six-and-a-half miles at night and I’d eat just chicken breast, egg whites, one baked potato a day, no butter, no salt and a lot of coffee, a lot of cigarettes. ... It was really stupid,” he says.'
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Seth Rogen: The Green Hornet

Seth Rogen lost 40 pounds for his role in The Green Hornet the old-fashioned way – by eating better and by training.'
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Seth Rogen: The Green Hornet

Rogen says he can’t help but feel he has sold out by losing weight: “I think for chubby guys, I was their guy so they were like, ‘I can be chubby. Seth Rogen’s chubby, so who cares,’ ” he joked. “But now I’m not so chubby any more. So now they’re like, ‘I have to lose weight.’ I’ve let them down. I’ve blatantly sold out. It’s only for money.”'
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Tom Hanks: Philadelphia

Tom Hanks lost 26 pounds to play a lawyer with AIDS in Philadelphia, for which he won a Best Actor Oscar.'
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Tom Hanks: Cast Away

Seven years later, Hanks dropped 44 pounds for Castaway, earning a Best Actor Oscar nomination. “The hardest thing was the time; I wish I could have just taken a pill and lost all the weight but the reality was that I had to start in October knowing that we were going to go back in February,” he said. “The idea of looking at four months of constant vigilance as far as what I ate, as well as two hours a day in the gym doing nothing but a monotonous kind of workout — that was formidable. You have to power yourself through it almost by some sort of meditation trickery. It's not glamorous.”'
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Related

Google must surely be getting a workout after Anne Hathaway revealed she lost 25 pounds for her role in Les Miserables by eating only oatmeal paste. But Hathaway is certainly not the first celebrity to lose weight for a film role.

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